Saving Pics

Many people never even remove pictures from their memory cards; and even when they do, they often have no idea as to where the pictures are located on their computer or how to find one at a later date for viewing. In order to resolve these problems you should come up with a "file saving scheme" and, once established, always use it to transfer and store your images for later viewing and editing. When done correctly, this can often seem like a time consuming process, however, the future benefits it provides cannot be over stated. A good file saving scheme should include a folder naming system for your negatives, a folder structure for saving pictures by subject, and a folder and file naming system for all "edited" pictures.

Step 1. - Transferring Negatives To The Computer: The first step is to get your negatives off the camera and onto your computer. You might find it odd that I refer to your 'pictures' as negatives; after all isn't that a term once used for 'film' photography. Even though the term may have had many different connotations relative to film based photography, it was basically used when referring to the original photo.  In digital photography you should make it a habit to refer to your 'original photo' as the negative, always leaving it in it's original "untouched" state. This way if you screw something up during the editing process and ruin the picture, you will always have the original negative to go back to and start over. Here are the steps for transferring negatives to a computer.

• The method you use to make the actual transfer doesn't matter. You can either use the USB camera cable that came with your camera or remove the camera's SD card and insert it into an SD slot on your computer. I personally like to remove the SD Card and insert it into the computer.
  
• Select a hard drive with the necessary storage. Then create a folder on the drive in which to place all the Negatives (pictures) from your camera. I use the following folder structure: E:\1999-2012 Negative Masters\My 2012 Negatives\{new negative folder} Depending upon your needs you may have more than one folder for negatives. I create one for each year's worth of photos.
  
• Second, create a {new negative folder} using the following syntax:  Neg-Yr-MoDay-Subject Title; Example: Neg-12-0915 Horses at Cold Creek If you need to create more than one folder because you took pictures of multiple subjects, then do so using the same syntax.
  
• Next, after locating the photos on the SD card, select, copy & paste them into the [new negative folder(s)]. 
• Finally, copy the {new negative folder(s) to the clipboard. 

Step 2. - Creating Subject Folders For Permanent Placement Of Your Pictures: This can be as simple or as detailed as is needed in order to help you locate your pictures in the future.

Because I tend to take pictures on a wide variety of subjects, I have created ten basic subject folders, each with as many sub-folders as is needed for further identification. Starting out you may only need a few folders, however, as time goes on and you continue to take more and more pictures, it will be relatively easy to add additional subject folders, and sub-folders, as needed.

• Once you have created the necessary subject folder(s) in which to store your pictures, select and open the appropriate folder and or sub-folder and  paste the corresponding negative folder from the clipboard.
  
• After pasting the negative folder, rename it by removing the [Neg-] prefix.
  Example: 11-0915 Horses at Cold Creek.
  
• Once you have the negatives copied to an appropriate subject folder, you can begin the process of editing them. Select the Editing Pics tab and follow the steps provided there. Once you have completed the editing process, return here and follow Steps 3 and 4 below for final storage and backup.

Step 3. - Preparing Picture Files for Permanent Storage: Now that you have edited all of the pictures in the subject folder, you have deleted pictures that were duplicates, out of focus, improperly exposed and/or not properly framed. After having renamed all of the edited pictures you want to keep, you should be left with a corresponding picture with its original camera title for each edited picture. You can now use this folder as a NEW negative folder, which will vastly reduce the amount of storage space needed on your computer.

• First, copy this "edited" folder back to the original negative folder location and rename it with the following syntax. Example: E-NEG-11-0915 Horses at Cold Creek  After renaming the folder, open it and delete all of the edited pictures with a title prefix of [E-].  This should leave you with the original negatives from which you created your edited pictures. You can now delete the original corresponding negative folder, e.g. Neg-11-0915 Horses at Cold Creek. The final result is a single new negative folder with a pre-fix that lets you know that the negatives contained therein have been reduced; having deleted all of the "poor" shots and thereby drastically reducing your storage needs.
• Second, go back and re-open the subject folder and DELETE all negative picture files that are not preceded with and [E-]. This eliminates duplication of those image negatives that are now in your negative folder.
• Close the folder and rename it by inserting an [-E] to the folder name as shown below:
  Example: 11-0915-E Horses at Cold Creek  This new folder title lets you know that this is a folder containing quality pictures that have been reviewed and edited. 

Step 4. - Review for Placement Into More Specific Subject Folders: Because the final subject folder may have a generic name, often indicating the place or location where the pictures were taken, I then review each of the edited pictures to determine if they need to be copied to a more specific subject folder, e.g. if while taking pictures of horses at Cold Creek, I also took pictures of some flowers or cacti, then I would copy just these pictures to a subject folder that contained just pictures of flowers or cacti.

Step 5. - Performing A Backup: If you have a manual backup process that involves saving files to either an external drive or to a separate drive in your computer, you should now copy these two folders to the appropriate backup location. If you don't currently have a backup plan, then you need to establish one NOW. There will come a day when either your computer or one of its drives will fail and without backups of your photos, everything will be lost FOREVER. I currently have two plans in use. Click here to learn more ... Making Photo Backups.